Like Lovers
by Purple Mongoose
Summary: A what-if [AU] fanfiction in which Nick gave in to the temptation of the Gorm suit. Set ten years after the event. [Working On]
1. Author's Notes

Like Lovers  
Author's Notes:  
  
  
Having been a fan of GALIDOR since its premier on Fox Kids way back whenever it started, it has taken me far too long to start any fanfiction for it. Thusly, I apologize to one of my best friends, Becky, for forcing her to endure hundreds of fanfiction ideas that have never, and will never, make it onto paper or, in any case, the computer screen. She has dealt with my frustration at the fact that Allegra obviously does not understand that Nick views her as More Than A Friend (which, of course, might just be me), supported me through my anti-Nepol crisis, and kindly informed me that Jens was not a spectacled human scientist as my forgetful mind filled in, but a blade of grass. She, too, is an Egg-shipper (a supporter of Nick/Allegra, in our weird and freakish tongue), and the self-proclaimed admirer of Jens and everyone's favorite Outer Dimension prince. I get the spaceship. (BOO, yeah!)  
  
Anyway, before I frighten away the four or five people remaining, I would like to take this opportunity to mention that this fanfiction is alternate-universe and is not intended for young impressionable minds such as my fourteen-year old one. But, seeing as I am the writer, I am exempt from it. Heh. So far, it keeps a cautionary PG-13 label for mild language, brief violence, and filthy dungeon cells. A possibility exists that you all might receive the wonderful skip-inducing joy of an 'R' fic, but I wouldn't bet on it. Seriously, I wouldn't.  
  
If, through any off chance, anyone involved with the actual show, be it creator, actor, or crewmember, please have mercy on me, and DO NOT READ THIS FANFIC. I would be horrifically mortified and might regale myself for the rest of eternity with the love song from 'Titanic,' which is a heinous thing when done in my singing voice. I cannot guarantee you will like the situations I, in my infinite cruelty, have decided to throw the characters in, or, for that matter, anything the characters may say, do, or imply. So have pity on me. Or I'll watch Season IV of ReBoot as well, and then I will be reeeeeally pissed off, considering My Two Bobs generates nausea, hatred, and a general loathing for Mainframe.   
  
For basic info, this fanfic is split into a prologue, fifteen chapters, and an epilogue, based on the song 'Like Lovers (Holding On)' from the Titan A.E. soundtrack by a group I have forgotten the name of. If you know, please inform me, and if there are any incorrect lyrics, please inform me as well. I like reviews and/or e-mail at WolfHowlN2@aol.com. Please drop a line in the review box or via e-mail: I don't bite.  
  
The disclaimer, complete lyrics, and a contents list will be posted once this work is completed. I had the prologue finished before July, but was out of town until the fifth - during which time, fanfiction.net was shut down. And then, of course, I was out of town for the past two weeks and unable to go on-line. However, beginning in about mid-August, updates should be regular. (Once a week.)  
  
Additionally, if any character names are misspelled, I don't really care right now. That and I'll blame the cheap-o trading cards with nifty pictures that came with assorted magazines my family subscribes to. Disney Adventures, Lego...  
  
If you or anyone you know can tell me where to find Galidor fanfiction not on fanfiction.net, I will love for a portion of an eternity and sing your praises for all of half an hour. That can be a very long time when you happen to be sitting next to me on a bus whilst I sing, poorly, '___ is one-der-fool!' If I wasn't tone deaf...I still would not be able to sing without accidentally causing spontaneous bleeding of the ears and a sudden loss of hearing for most innocent passerby within hearing range. But...fanfiction! Give to me! 


	2. Prologue: far nearer

Like Lovers  
Prologue: far/nearer  
  
  
It is cold in the darkness of the wide cell and she is exhausted, legs curled up to her chest where she sits in the upward slanted corner, hiding her brown face from the various prisoners trapped in the same cell as she. The smell of defecation is strong and nauseating; her abdomen is cramped not just from her position, but she refuses to lose the shred of dignity she still retains by loosing her belt and crouching near the floor before the eyes of fifteen male aliens and the silent, faceless guard. She knows she could never live it down if he finds out, a different embarrassment than it would have been ten years ago. So she waits with the cramping and the stink and the bars of this cell she has been in once before, knowing he will come soon, not for the fifteen others who have offended him or his code in some form or another, but for her.  
  
She hates the memories this place brings back, memories of being trapped in this cell by Gorm with the Boy she would die for, and he for her. Blue eyes with grey flecks and carefully styled brown hair hanging over one, with pouty lips almost always curved up in a grin and feminine eyelashes he swore he didn't have, a spectral form of a boy who changed from silly to dangerous over the course of ten years, a dark man. If she thinks about him, whether it be the creative child who befriended her at elementary school or the off-the-wall teenager brought to the Outer Dimension or this frightening overlord that was him, is him, will be him, she will not be strong when he comes for her and that she must be. Because no matter how corrupted he has become, no matter how much he hates Nepol and Euripides and Jens, he has always been lenient with her. It must not make her weak.  
  
The pain in her abdomen is growing slowly and she grimaces, thankful, at least, that it is not time for her monthly discharge. She does not want to imagine that; the cell is unpleasant enough already. A shiver runs through her body, her nerves sparking at the coldness of the dungeons in direct contrast with the blinding heat of the surface. Now she regrets wearing a red shirt, sleeveless, wishing futilely that she had donned a sweater before leaving her bedchamber on T'rall, as if she would have known that several hours later she would be on Kek, freezing mid-cramp in a vile cage. Frowning, she tests the bars again, as she has done every five minutes for the past seven hours, and is once more frustrated that they are more solid than the ones Gorm constructed. But was it not her Boy that said all of Gorm's power had been derived from a fraction of his, stolen when he an infant? Groaning softly under her breath, she bends forward, a strip of skin on her lower back pressing against cold, wet stone.  
  
The sound of a lame foot dragging across the floor grabs her attention and she lifts her head, dark eyes staring at a whiskered Larjonian. It is ragged in appearance, blue flesh torn in spots, causing it to look disheveled and sickly, something it may be. Looking at it now is hard; she has seen his forces exterminate this creature's home planet mercilessly. She had seen it from his side, captive, seen that he had flinched almost imperceptibly and gripped the arm of his arched chair, eyes darkening, and not for the first time she drifts back to that day and wonders if he can ever be redeemed.  
  
"You're her," the Larjonian says simply, silver-gold eyes unreadable and constantly swirling intoxicatingly. She nods slowly, pulled back from her thoughts, and settles for locking eyes with it. A moment of silence is drawn out as it waits for something she cannot give, for what does it want? An apology, perhaps, she thinks, an apology for something I did not do. "Zane," it continues after a while and she becomes aware that the other prisoners are watching, "the one meant to save us all." There is no bitterness in its lilting voice, but a sympathy and understanding that confuses her. "It is difficult," the voice tilts up like the honeyed song of a soprano, "fighting an enemy that is not."  
  
And suddenly she understand, her throat closing convulsively. "Yes," she manages to squeeze out, the pain in her abdomen forgotten. "It hurts like hell." The urge to let every word, every emotion, every longing slip past her lips to this being that sees the misery burning in her eyes, it nearly overpowers the unconscious wall built up to protect her from revealing things that should be hidden. She needs to rage, to lash out, screaming and crying for, against, with, the whimsical young man that has engrained himself into her heart and soul. But the wall is too strong, fortified over the years so that she is unable to open the gate to anybody other than him. She stays quiet and a scabbed hand of pale blue, whitened by bleeding, touches her shoulder gently, hovering above it and barely touching her bare skin. "I'm sorry," she whispers, unsure of whom she is apologizing to. It nods and squeezes her shoulder, hobbling back to its spot in the opposite corner, near the bars that she tests absently once more. She expected anger, not wholly deserved, and this acceptance is infinitely kinder than anything she had imagined. Her eyes flit to a wall across the thin strip of a walkway between cells, tracing lines uniting the immovable grey bricks and ignoring the lonely hurt that has broken free of the carefully constructed pen that has held it captive for ten years. Swelling up, it swamps over and fills her bones with an ache, drowning her in a thousand what-ifs, what-should-have-beens, and why-didn'ts.  
  
Just for a few seconds, or perhaps it was for a few minutes, she becomes a twelve-year old tomboy with a black eye from fighting a bully. It had hurt tremendously for a week, swollen and a nasty shade of purple, but she didn't care because he had come into the fight, swinging his arms like Don Quixote's windmill, vicious and snarling the second she had been punched in the face. His lip, she remembers, was split and he had somehow managed to break his thumb. "I don't have to do homework!" he cried joyfully that long ago day, flaunting his cast at her with his usual cocky grin, and, in that moment, she had hit the greatest stage of puberty. Suddenly, her best friend was no longer just that: he was a boy who willingly was 'trashed,' as he put it, for her. He was the Great Crush.  
  
She is slightly startled at finding she is in the cell, pulling herself out of the memories for something she cannot place. It must be unimportant, she decides, seeing nothing that strikes her as odd, until her eyes catches the guard's rigid stance; it is still and stiffly straight, as if a rod has been thrust up its back, along its spine. He is finally coming and she smiles grimly, instinctively aware of the horrible anticipation knotting in her stomach. A wave of resentment follows; she hates him right now, for killing her dream of a blue house with a white picket fence holding a barking Labrador in, for stealing the secret hope of a small wedding and two children with light skin and ink eyes, for breaking every wish and fantasy and thought. As the sound of footfalls echo down the hallway, the resentment dies quietly and leaves her to wait alone in a cell of strangers, feeling as if she is naked and exposed. Positioning her hands on the wall behind her, she uses it to lever herself up onto her feet, taking a strong stand and letting her arms fall by her sides, curling black hair clinging to her cheeks, shorter than it was once and merely touching her shoulder blades. She walks slowly to the door built from bars, standing casually there with her eyes fixed on the light shadows of the entrance. She is not disappointed.  
  
He is alone when he arrives, striding purposefully past the guard and to the other side of the cell door. His blue eyes connect with her ebon, weaving the colors together, and the silence is engulfing, pulling her soul into his and his into hers. He unlocks the door with a miniscule twitch of a finer and, in the corner of her eye, she sees one or two aliens stumble back, surprised, as the doors swing open. She stills her lips from turning up; she, after all, is used to the peculiarities of the glinch power and, even more so, the oddities of his personality. A smile lights up his face and he holds his clean peach hand out for her dirtied brown hand, which she gives silently. Led soundlessly from the cell, she hears the door creak shut and lock itself as she follows him, her arm crooked into his.  
  
He is taller that her by a foot or so, though it does not surprise her much, considering the genetics of her family are a blend of Asian and Native American, and -- she tilts her head to one side and marks up, in her mind, that she really does not know his family's genetic history. In any case, she feels small standing near him and more than a little angry over the fact. He should be the one feeling small; he is the murderer, the betrayer, the tyrant who should have been king. She is merely the woman who must destroy his power.  
  
"I've missed you," he says almost shyly, glancing over his shoulder down at her. Her chest tightens painfully at the lonely look in his ocean blue eyes, and immediately hates herself for caring. His smile is hesitant, cautious, and she feels a twinge of connection with him, a surge of friendliness that demands she brush an errant brunette bang from his eyes. But she does not: she is strong. His smile freezes and slowly fades, his eyes hardening as he returns his gaze to the hallway, dropping her arm and quickening his pace. "Right," he states darkly.  
  
She watches him, her own pace slowing down. Thoughtfully, she takes a few steps backwards, moving to the right; her body slams into an invisible wall and she snaps her face forward to glare at him. He looks at her and smirks, the blue sleeves of his jerkin fluttering slightly.  
  
"Don't," he commands in a subtle, amused voice.  
  
She walks swiftly, brushing past him, and tosses carelessly over her shoulder, "I seem to remember a time when you would never force me to do anything." Her tone is icy and more than a little cruel. There is another long silence with only the sounds of their feet falling against tiled stone breaking it. She does not understand how she feels about the lack of response, instead remaining voiceless in the game of waiting for the other to speak. It is a game birthed a few years ago, amidst a rebellion on Shuah that had ultimately failed, and she has never been comfortable with it. He passes by her, ignoring her as well as she is his silence.  
  
"I saw my mother last month," he finally begins, his voice echoing gently down the dank corridor. "I assume what she told me she told you years ago." They stop walking and look at each other, both faces impassive. 'That I was never the one meant to save Galidor." She nods, now, though it is a careful, controlled movement designed to indicate her awareness of the knowledge and nothing more. His voice is distant, as if the thought had never occurred to him before his mother appeared to him. "What she said made me think," he begins walking and she follows automatically, turning left or right where it is necessary, "do we ever have control over our fates? And, yeah, the question's been done to death, but still. Was I supposed to have those dreams so you would be brought to the Outer Dimension?" His low alto is tilting, rising and falling lightly with the accenting of each word. "And then, I replaced Gorm…so you would grow stronger?" She hears him speaking but her mind is gone, brought back to the day he was first corrupted; he had killed Gorm, slaughtered him uncaringly with the eerie smile twisting his features into a foreign mask.  
  
She does what her mind swears is just, ignoring her heart. She punches him square in the jaw, splitting two knuckles on her chapped hand, blood trickling along his chin from a gash in his lip and betwixt her knuckles into the lines of her calloused palm. His eyebrows are arched in surprise and his tongue flicks out to catch the trail of blood, crimson against his already full lower lip. Her breathing is heavy and angry, his shallow and startled. "How do you like it?" she demands harshly, her eyes narrowed as they stare at one another. He licks his lip again, not fully understanding until he remembers.  
  
"You're still pissed about that," he says wonderingly, fingering his bloody lower lip and staring at her with his eyebrows merging together. "I destroy entire worlds, enslave races, systematically annihilate cultures," his voice grows in pitch steadily, "and you care more about the one time I hit you?" He is incredulous, beautiful blue eyes glowing with some odd fury. "Ten years," he hisses, sucking his lip and wiping the blood off of his chin. "Ten years since I hit you." Her face is stony while she massages her bleeding hand. "Ten goddamn years, Allegra!"  
  
Allegra's eyes tear away from his and Nicholas lets a strangled noise rip forth from his throat. "I'll take you to your room," he tells her in a tight voice. "Follow me and don't stray." She is pushed forward by the shrinking wall, momentarily thrown off balance.  
  
The droplets of garnet blood spilled on the floor slowly slide toward one another, pulled by gravity to the lowest point in the hallway until they become one small puddle of dark red.  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
now we've traveled far  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
  
Allegra's hand flew up to her jaw and she gaped, through the tears slipping down her cheeks, at the form of Nick's raised fist. Oh God, she realized distantly, he actually hit me. Nick stepped over her legs, over her body sprawled across the hard metal floor, and approached Gorm, still wearing that ridiculous chest piece he no doubt had thought similar to those of his idolized comic book superheroes. He was going to kill Gorm, she had failed at trying to stop him peacefully, some object had to be nearby that wasn't bolted to the floor, don't let Nick kill Gorm, damnit I've seen this movie! The hero is supposed to let the villain live, saving his humanity, doing the right thing from every angle of perspective. As her hand closed around a metal cylinder knocked free by Nick earlier, she knew, in her clenching stomach, that she was too late.  
  
She turned her head to one side, eyes latching onto the cape-obscured figures and ears catching the muted cry of Gorm's surprise as a lance of glinch energy barreled through his chest. A fine spray of crimson spurted into the air and Nick stepped back, his face a frightening calmness, discarding the chest piece by pulling it over his head. Allegra dropped the pipe and registered shock at the fact that the tears doubled, stinging her face with their salty heat. She stumbled to her feet and ran gracelessly from the control room, her back to his cries for her to stat, praying that he wouldn't hurt her again. The image of Gorm falling to the floor, a ragged bleeding hole in his chest, burned itself into her brain and she ran faster, her head growing heavier with each step. Slowing down, she touched the back of her head gingerly and jerked her fingers away in alarm, bringing her hand to her face and staring at the bright, sticky wetness coloring the lengths of her fingers and thumb. Falling when Nick had struck her, she must have smashed her head along something jagged. Allegra, focused on the blood staining her hand, heard the sound of him following her, and, wearily, began running aimlessly once more.  
  
A hundred corridors, twisting and turning incomprehensibly, all cold and unwelcoming as she stumbled along their confusing paths, hoping that, through some miracle, she would find the exit, and nearly simultaneously, inexplicably, she nearly fell out of the prison into the sweltering heat of the Kek deserts. The sand exploded up, a storm screaming about the surface, granules sticking to the back of her head, stinging and burning. Never once did she question why she was running from the closest friend she had, the boy who was, in a sense, her other half: he had struck her and did not stop to see if she was all right; he killed a man without a care, without flinching. A tiny part of her protested, saying he had done it all for her, had risked to death to save her, had struck her down so as to vanquish the enemy that the enemy might not vanquish her. None of it made sense, whirling around her like the orange sands.  
  
And as she stumbled over the dunes and the rocks, crumbling to her knees before the Egg, as Nepol pulled her in and she ordered the door to be closed, as they asked where Nick was and she screamed some unknown sentence they obeyed, Allegra Zane felt her heart break.  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   
but are we any nearer  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
  
  
  
//end prologue//  
  
  
  
  
||Notes for prologue: If the prologue seems confusing to you, I apologize. Most things will be explained through the course of the fanfiction and you simply need to stick around for it. As for the change in tenses, the first part (ending with the first lyric) is set in the 'now' of the fanfic, the present, whereas the second part (beginning with the first lyric and ending with the second) is set in the past. As you hopefully derived from the summary, this is set with the premise of 'what if Nick had struck Allegra and killed Gorm?' I think it might be beneficial if you have seen the episodes I have in mind.|| 


	3. One: fall began

Like Lovers  
One: fall/began  
  
  
There is a dent in the wall, roughly the size and shape of Nicholas' fist, which is fitting in more ways than one as it is his fist that created it. He does not care nor notice, though, being more interested with his thoughts and the hurried, rhythmic sound of his pacing. Wearing a hole in the carpet, as his adopted mother would put it, yet he ignores that fleeting realization. His anger is not directed at Allegra and he is not fueled by some mysterious hatred for the wall, but is stemmed from within and aimed at himself. He feels awkward and more than a bit put-ou, generally at his own absurd hopefulness. Why had he expected her to react favorably after all he has done? He knows it is logical how she responded; nonetheless, he feels betrayed, hurt that she would treat his actions as she did. Nicholas supposes this is how she felt the day he did the unthinkable and hit her, changing their lives irreversibly.  
  
Still, he thinks sulkily, she could have at least shown some sort of emotion about the room he had personally designed - not that he has taken the time to inform her of that. Her face, when he escorted her to the room, was absolutely controlled, emotionless, a mask of unmoving stone, and he carried enough emotion for them both. And so, now, he paces quickly in his large bedchambers, whirling about to repeat his steps in front of the wide window stretching from ceiling to floor. Stopping irritatedly, he steps up to it, staring, eyes narrowed, at the vast, swirling orange sands, broken only by outcroppings of stone, that compose Kek. The anger is fading away, replaced with an anxious feeling that knots itself around his stomach, squeezing and wrapping. He should have told her when he took her to the room, should have told her what he wants to do, but her silence put him off. So instead of mulling over what he needs to say, he envisions the room he designed, wishing she had said something, anything.  
  
The curtains are a thick red, sewn from crushed velvet, and they hang from silver posts before the bright, wide windows, and it overlooks the glorious courtyard built one day long past, an intricate garden within the blood-colored stone walls he created some time ago during a fit of boredom and what was quickly becoming a case of severe depression. He likes to think she will, in the very least, find some pleasure in that spot of green amidst the insanely constant shades of red. The large bed, the carpets and dressers and drapings are all dark red, polished and cut and kept more or less simplistic as, no matter what else has changed, Allegra still has no fondness for overly lavish decorations. Of course, it was a great temptation to try to impress her with delicate trinkets, but a sense of something or other kept him from making that particular mistake.  
  
Suddenly, Nicholas is struck with the horrible, unwanted idea of whether or not red is still her favorite color, and he rolls his eyes at his own pathetic idiocy to think a simple thing like the color scheme of a room could be responsible for her icy behavior. He sighs and, touching his temples with his thumbs, sweeps across the unforgiving hard floor to sit on the edge of his bed. Closing his eyes, he clears his mind and pushes all worries of Allegra from him, forming a peacefully empty slate in his head. Slowly reaching out, in a sense of the word, to grasp the edges of reality and shred them, he effortlessly molds it and shapes it as he desires, pushing and formulating strings of words until he is satisfied. As he opens his eyes, lips twitched up in a smile, he sends it to where he wishes it to be.  
  
Feeling rather less upset than he had before, he stands and absently brushes nonexistent dust motes from his blue jacket, still smiling to himself in the great emptiness of his bedchambers. A brief flash of unease interrupts his welcome good mood as he worries that his gift will be received poorly, and far too quickly, his pleased feeling is replaced with one of discontent. His dark mood rapidly returning, Nicholas pinches the bridge of his nose in irritation, his mouth curving into a frown once more, as it has often done recently. Smoldering darkly, he bites his rounded lower lip, drawing a masochistic relief from the angry pain, and he decides a distraction is in order, such as, his stomach puts in hopefully, dinner.  
  
Besides, Allegra must be hungry, he rationalizes and this brings an unusual smile to his face, unusual in that he rarely, if ever, smiles in such a way, free of ulterior motives or dark lights flickering in the back of his delicately flecked eyes. Leaning toward the vast window, the sheer glass quivering once before it is no more, he spreads his arms out, fixing his gaze on the burning sky above. In moments, the piercing light of the system's solitary sun is wiped away, destroyed by roiling, dark clouds that send a gentle, thumping rain to the desert lands unused to such weather. The breezes, cool and wafting, entering the prison in any place they can find, sweep past his face and fill his chambers with the dusky scent of rain and the foreign taste of violets. It is both soothing and exciting, and he stretches his arms, wincing just a bit when his shoulder blade cracks into place. He makes a face, feeling his shoulder with his fingers, and strolls across the thick carpeting dyed blue to the door, stepping through the silver frame and pausing to replace the window; no sense in letting his belongings be ruined by the building gale outside.  
  
The hallway is, as it always has been, dimly lit, and the gothic windows lining its outer wall are streaked with soft, glinting rain, providing the only source of light along this length of the former prison's north side. He trails his fingers across the cooled glass, leaving paths of dryness in the mild condensation forming already inside, and he watches the storm as it gains strength, little by little. This, he thinks with a sudden brush of sadness pressing against his heart, is the kind of weather Euripides adored in his stoic way. Nicholas closes his eyes, resting his forehead against the slick pane and staring, blankly, at the beautiful, fiery rain pounding the dusty world like a thousand fairy fingers tapping a board marred with chalk dust. He sighs and the sky growls, a flickering tendril of lightning spearing from ebon cloud to soaked earth. How can her mere presence make him regret what is over with?  
  
And even the air is heavier, pushing down on his shoulders with the triple fold anxiety of waiting and guilt and something else he is not yet sure of, but feels he is not ready for in any case, so he does not bother forcing it to become clear and tangible. He exhales again and wrinkles his nose at the billowing mist that spurts into being on the window, pulling his head back and absentmindedly wiping the flat cloud off the smooth surface with his sleeve, observing the cleared spot for a few empty seconds.   
  
A sense of gradual awareness tickles along his spine, a creeping brush of familiarity and the supernatural that slips into his mind and, very gently, wins his attention in a matter of mildly unnerving seconds. But it doesn't startle him as it once did, and he smiles again, wearily, forcing the expression onto his lips as he turns and rests the heels of his palms on the jutting windowsill, crossing his legs at his shins and leaning back. "Hello, Mother," he says pleasantly to the flickering spectre strolling towards him. He deliberately keeps his voice void of anything accusatory, instead opting to use a slightly casual formality. He inclines his head respectfully and keeps his gaze steady until she stands before him. She, too, dips her head in acknowledgement and he feels a twinge of ancient mortification at the image of this delicate, regal woman showing him the respect he demands of other on her own volition. It makes him uncomfortable, so he squares his shoulders and tries his hardest to appear nonchalant.  
  
"Hello, Nicholas," she says in return, her own smile teasing. The exotic markings on her face glitter at something and he grudgingly allows his smile to become genuine. Holding her hand out, blonde eyebrow arched tellingly, she waits for Nicholas to lend her his arm before they step down the hallway, long abandoned by servants and drones. The sounds of feet touching the floor are caught and bound by the thick, rich blue carpeting, muffled and obscured by the woven waves of the fabric sea. For some time, they are silent, meandering along the length of the storm-lit passage. Finally, in a thoughtful voice, tinged with wry humor, Riana comments, "I see you had an unfortunate accident." While Nicholas touches his lower lip with his free fingers, feeling the thin scab gingerly, she smiles just a fraction wider and continues surveying the end of the hall. He laughs a little, almost wonderingly, and she knows he laughs not for her or because of her words, but at the game of wits he and the Zane woman have been engaged in for the many years past. And even though, as a queen, she is saddened by his inner darkness, she is secretly glad as well; he is learning, always.  
  
"I can't believe I was so worried," he grins sheepishly, eyes sparkling, still fingering the mending gash in his lip. "I mean, I really should've known she'd do something like that." He laughs again, shaking his head melodramatically, and the storm outside is less overwhelming and a bit more…romantic, Riana thinks to her self and she, too, laughs, as a mother is amused at her own youthful thoughts. "You're thinking it again, Mother," he says playfully, barely managing to keep his voice from breaking into a sing-song tone.  
  
With a careful smile, she merely pats his arm with her loose hand, taking care to be both friendly and queenly in both actions. Her skirt whispers gently against the scrolling carpet stretching along the center of the shivering corridor, one of the few sounds other than timed steps and Nicholas' quiet, amused laugh. She closes her eyes briefly, swept with the changes this place stores systematically in its walls: what once was a prison is now a castle; what once was dark is now lit; what was broken is mended. Yet, she thinks with overwhelming sorrow, he is not, incarcerated in his own shadowed mind, the gears of his heart worn and thinning if not broken, and she is nearly crushed by the protective urges that tell her to protect him from change, from pain, from everything that attracted him to, and repelled him from, Allegra, the woman she wished she had known when she and the Stranger - oh, her beloved Stranger - had been tested so severely those many years ago. But then, she continues with a smile, eyes still closed to the wavering world, Nicholas would not know this independent, overly responsible heroine, would he? So the thought fades from her mind, having only existed for a moment, and her eyes flutter open as they approach a turn at the end of the hall, a new path streaking off at the corner. She releases her hold on his arm, merely grasping his wrist with a light touch of her fingers. She can sense he is contemplating, mulling over something that is somewhat upsetting to him.  
  
She wonders briefly at his penchant for overreacting, a thing brought about by his impatience and wild imagination, and raises a slim eyebrow in question. Almost reluctantly, he asks, in a subdued voice, "Why didn't you tell us sooner?" A heartbeat later, he adds, "About Allegra being the one meant to free Galidor and not me." As she turns his words over in her mind, trying to formulate a suitable answer, Riana hears him mutter in a sulking tone, not meant to be heard, "It would've been helpful to know that ten years ago." She responds, surprising him, by slapping his shoulder in a chiding manner and he reels a little, eyes widening perplexedly and then guiltily glancing at, of course, his feet as he flushes.   
  
"Really, Nicholas," she scolds not unkindly, "you're only around seventeen years too old for that sort of behavior." She smiles, though, and cradles his cheek in her pale blue hand, lit by the spectral glow that shields her essence, still finding an answer that may be both truthful yet appeasing to him. "Destiny is fickle," she speaks after a drawn out time, choosing to ignore his rolling eyes and bring her hand down to fold it in place with the other. "I had some inkling she would be responsible for the safety of Galidor, but, alas," she smiles, amused, "my own maternal pride refused to let me dwell on the idea that my darling son would not be the Outer Dimension's awaited savior and, instead, some Earth girl," here Nicholas frowns unconsciously at her negative wording, "would complete the quest." Her eyes soften and mist nearly imperceptibly, and she breathes out slowly. "I never dreamed you would replace Gorm…and now Galidor must fear its prince."  
  
"I don't give a rip about Galidor," he says in annoyance, crossing his arms over his chest and glowering pointedly down the smooth length of his nose at the golden-haired queen. "I have the rest of the Outer Dimension to worry about, and Galidor can have its happy little nirvana all to itself, because I don't need the hassle of more people hating me or celebrating the 'coming of salvation.'" He is ranting now, having unfolded his arms and making curt gestures with them. "Allegra's got all the pieces except for the last, and I just want the key fragments to destroy them, so you can stop worrying about me sending the spawn of evil to destroy my own people!" He makes an upset face, radiating self-righteous resentment in glittering, unseen waves that tickle her sense with regret and the discomfort such hostile words will always bring to a mother. Had he treated his adoptive mother, the mother who raised him and loved him as a babe, a child, a young man, in such a temperamental way? She sighs and shakes her head slowly, a flash of lightning reflecting off a mirror on the wall behind Nicholas' shoulder, flashing across the silver scales curving along her left eye.  
  
"Must you?" she questions sadly and then she is gone.  
  
Clutching at the suddenly empty air, hands lit momentarily by a residual blue glow, he stares through the space left, into the swirling, snarling storm he began and now must wait for to pass, and he finds it harder to separate the individual storms that threaten to tear him apart from each other. "Mother?" he calls tentatively, his hands still hovering, fingers curled up, in place, his eyes still trying to find her ethereal form, but he is neither surprised nor, for the most part, disappointed. She comes and goes when the moment is right and he has, forever, the power to visit her in the stifling shadow realm she must dwell in. Slowly, he flexes his fingers and lets his arms fall to his sides, strands of chestnut hair scattering over his dark eyebrows. "Good-bye, then," he says, his voice swallowed up by the hissing thunder. "Maybe I should apologize to Allegra…?" He expects no answer and it is thusly pleasing when a soft breeze not of his making ruffles his hair gently, like slender fingers tousling it approvingly. Twisting on his heel, he walks, nearly running, about the corner, arms moving in careless rhythm with his legs, to the perfectly hewn steps dancing up to a new corridor tracing for a mere fifty feet: there are two doors alone. One, at the end of the shadowed corridor, opens to space, a portal to dangerous heights and a testament to a deeper interest in perfection the chamber obscured by the other door; this other door is a few feet from the crown of the stairs and it is at this one that he hesitates, cautiously leaning his palms on the carved door, fingertips trailing over the inlaid patterns he had copied from a memory of an Arabic woodcut. He glances above, at the glass window set in the ceiling, seeing the tiny, wispy puddles of rain spotting it, and he prays for guidance, for protection, for anything along the lines of positive reinforcement, or whatever would help this encounter. He raps his knuckles once against the wood and prepares to knock it again when it - the door, the barrier, the line he is beginning to cross - swings open sharply and an aromatic bouquet of thorns and petals is smashed into his face, scraping his cheeks and flooding his olfactory nerves with the distinctive scent of the crimson roses he had sent to her room.  
  
"How dare you!" Allegra screams, her throat made husky by rage and angry tears. She repeats her cry, shoving him back as he holds the flowers in stunned silence and she makes a low, furious sound. "We aren't thirteen anymore, you pompous jerk!" The tears color her face a beautiful, aching silvery brown and she shoves him again, though with less fury and more hurt fueling her movements. "It isn't like passing notes to Amanda Laurence," her voice drips with sarcasm as she spits out the name, "instead of helping me in English. It was fine to pick a daisy and say, 'gee, I'm sorry, Allegra, won't you be my best friend again' when we were in the eighth grade, but we moved past that a long time ago!" She chokes on what may be a sob and looks at him, conveying a decade of shattered emotions through her dark, depressively sparkling eyes, and she, like an ebbing hurricane, bursts into one last round of power and slams her chamber's door shut, disappearing behind it.  
  
Nicholas fingers the roses and mouths a phrase, lowering his face so that his short, thick hair hides his features. He tightens his grip on a single petal and rips it free, holding it between his fingers. "She loves me," he whispers, letting the petal fall and grasping another, pulling it off the prominent flower.  
  
"She loves me not."  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
there's a feeling we each will fall  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   
  
And in the moment following the flight of Allegra Zane from the horrific prison of Kek, in the minutes after Gorm's murder, though none of the Outer Dimension denizens would know of this for months in the chaos, there was a change like none Gorm had ever caused. Lands that were dry were flooded and mountains were demolished, moved, reshaped. What once was night became day and plagues never before seen destroyed cultures and people, devouring the life and soul of those caught in the path of the change. With the warping of nature, 'fixing' what Gorm had altered, things were set into motion that should not have been.   
  
Those with power grew stronger and the weak grew weaker in the following. Some would admit later that, yes, his intentions had been good, but his motives never were. Power corrupts and he was born with it mingled in his blood, a power different than that of royalty as in his mother or prophecy as in his father, but pure, unadulterated power, manifested in the form of what was called 'glinch.'   
  
No one should play God.  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
in the fields where it all began  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   
  
  
  
//end chapter one//  
  
  
  
  
||Many apologies for the long wait and this rather melodramatic chapter. Of course, I have to thank everyone who reviewed - I got five more than I expected! Keep 'em coming! - and, in particular, Lady Cassandra, who reviewed a second time to make sure I hadn't fallen off the face of the earth. Kudos to the reviewer who requested I describe Allegra's room; by the time I got around to reading reviews, I'd already written it, so that works out well for all, no? As for next chapter, tentatively scheduled to be posted Christmas Eve, expect a Flashback! That's right, no angst, no present tense, and no 'what the---?' For the most part, anyway. I'll try to tackle what Nick did that was so bad, what happened to Allegra, and so on. Don't expect me to cover years of stuff, though; a couple of months is all you can hope for…Questions! Due to my missing several episodes…What is the Stranger's name? Is Riana the queen's name? What is the name of Gorm's little illusion-y goat dude? And a question for my e-mailer, if you remember, what did I name the old man? 0o; I lost my transcript of the e-mail I sent back to you. I hope everyone enjoyed this as best they could, and please review! Leave chocolate, too, if you'd like…my birthday was in September, so it could be a late present! *winks* Just kidding, of course.||  
  
Additional: Fixed incredibly stupid typos in the prologue and hit self over the head with a pen while doing so. This is why I shouldn't type things up late at night. I'll probably have to fix stuff in this chapter later, anyway. 


	4. Two: hear promise

Like Lovers  
2: hear/promise  
  
  
He sits in the darkest corner, squat body hunched over the edge of the bar in a pose of fear as he studies the sour liquid tucked inside an unsightly mug, unconsciously striving to call back something lost to him. Something tantalizing and dark that can hide him, protect him from the shadows he once pledged his soul to in the blood of another, a woman who had begged for mercy and screamed, but was silenced cruelly in spite of her faith in deliverance, in false promises. The thought of her blood roils his stomached in a wave of disgust; at himself or her pitiful defenses, he does not know for sure. He makes a guttural sound and moves to down the fermented drink, to let it burn down his throat with slimy coolness, thick and bitter. He fails and merely sips, grimacing at the strong flavor and nearly gagging, a strong, vile scent filling his sensitive nostrils and bringing dark memories of blood and screaming…  
  
"How ya doing, babe?" a rude voice questions, shattering the tentative seclusion just as the slender sword descending shatters a molded glass before him, glittering shards spraying thinly in a rain of silver glass. He looks up, quivering as he restrains the compulsion, ancient as every basic instinct, to bolt, flee from the predator fully capable of tearing him into a horrific mess, and he dredges up the reserves to stop his shaking under the icy stare of her upturned eyes, black as dusted coal and as deadly. Thin, crooked crescent ridges along her cheekbones, her arched eye sockets, glint a sickly shade of green from the dull refracted light shimmering off the glass droplets and she smiles heartlessly, her eyes darkening not with humor but a flickering hate that burns his gut to lead. Well, he thinks miserably, at least I have alcohol. "Before you open your lying mouth, Taggert," she continues, voice carefully cleansed of thought and emotion, "I want you to know I would love nothing more than to tear it off of your face and pin it to Gorm's nonexistent heart." His face flinches at Gorm's name before he can stop it and her smile grows crafty, sly and curiously hungry between her limp, black hair. "No more poisonous words; you know what I know.  
  
"Bluetooth didn't kill Gorm."  
  
It hangs in the air, the voiced admission of a whispered rumor, cultivated in underground circles and bartered for salvation in bars, spread amongst those that followed, worshipped Gorm as they nurture slow plans to change fate once more. To hear it stated as fact, as a venomous truth capable of rendering the mind useless, by the wolf, the Hunter of Galidor, made an imperceptible shift occur in the heady, smoky air, as if every breath in the room is unraveling, leaning closer to hear and learn what they yearn, fear. Taggert feels dull, tarnished and worn, and he presses his wrinkled, browned fingers against the smooth surface of the mug before, aching to shove away the irrational niggle of terror wrapping about his throat, he sucks the remnants of the drink into his mouth, choking it down and tossing the mug back to the counter. It rolls, shadowed and calloused, over the bar, stopping after a moment as it slows, dying.  
  
"Gorm," he hears himself whisper in a tightened voice, clenching and unclenching his hands as he tries to think of a suitable lie, "is dead, he cannot be alive, the tapes…" He starts again, dimly knowing that he must tread carefully with the Hunter, speak in lies that twist upon themselves to form an illusion of truth, but he cannot drag it out, this forgotten skill of deception. "There are tapes of his death, salvaged from the throne room. I do not think--" Taggert stops, frightened, as she slams her blade on the vinyl counter a second time, scarring the synthetic glaze, her free hand snarling at the throat of his jerkin and twisting sharply, swiftly altering stiff cloth into biting edges that dig into his neck. His hands flail, his body shoved off the stool and pinned painfully on the wall, his back crushing and straightening against it, one hand touching the bar briefly in quest of a makeshift weapon. She drives her honed blade of shining moonlight between his fingers, her knuckles a string of bright pearls as she clutches the grip with crushing force.  
  
"Don't you dare try to bitch me," she hisses lowly, her beautiful, violent eyes flattened like the Earth creature she is called after, feral and barely leashed by her own strength of will. "You know Gorm is alive, as should any moron who pays attention, and you are not going to give me any of your crap!" her hand tightens on his shirt, her thumb pushing into the scaly flab at his neck, and he moves his hand in pacifying acquiescence, mingled with self-preservation, from the blade buried in the bar, turning his palms up to her. Tearing her sword free, she relinquishes her hold on him, but, where once he would have fled, he remains, acutely aware that she will not hesitate to plunge her weapon into his chest and even more aware that it would be useless to attempt to strike her; the glittering bottle tinted an engulfing shade of violet by its contents hangs, as grim a reminder as the sword she holds impatiently, around her slender neck, voicelessly speaking of her ultimate superiority. "Bluetooth might not realize it himself, but he's been tracking down anyone with glinch powers. When Allegra ran, he followed, forgetting that which was imperative, forgetting to take back that itsy bitsy, insignificant," her voice drips with sarcasm, "bit that Gorm stole from him. Even Bluetooth isn't stupid enough to choose a girl over his own blood. He slayed an illusion and you know it. His glinch would have called him to absorb that which was his and he wouldn't be able to control that urge, so the only reason why so many refugees with Galidorean blood are taken is because he's looking for that absurd fraction missing." She steps back, smug and smirking, her features contorting powerfully.  
  
"If," Taggert says faintly after several long minutes, "if you knew this, already, what purpose would you have for seeking me out? You…think that you know it all, do you not?" And then, with some courage, or idiocy, tainting his words, "You are a fool, Lihnd."  
  
Lihnd blinks, her smirk dwindling into a thin-lipped frown, a bare downward twitching of the corners of her mouth, and then a ghostly grin twists back her cheeks into sleek, eerie arches as she laughs emptily. "Pay attention, Taggert: I wanted affirmation of what I was most sure I knew, and," she continues with a cruel smirk touching her pale lips, "I needed someone to run my ideas by."  
  
"Stress relief," says Taggert with a boldness he thought he had long since lost. "You only wish to take out your rage on myself and others of the same sort. You have no need for me. " His eyes linger on the light-kissed steel she holds, at the tensing muscles sewn along her bones, over, around, in her fingers and rounded knuckles, and he bites his tongue sharply, feeling blood well from mirroring slashes, as her hand tightens on the geometrically patterned pommel, her face drawn and terrifyingly lupine in its sudden, calculated anger. To play the fool, he has known well for years, is to play the Joker, the all powerful deception, slid beneath the innocent ace. Dying now, at the hand of an irritatingly superior Galidorean woman, is a gamble he willing to take this far in the game.  
  
But instead of calling his bluff, telling him with her sword's sharp edge, gouging into his throat, that she if fully aware his joker if but a deux-of-diamonds, pointless and powerful, she grins, an adept warrior in this battle of knowledge and cautious, shifting boundaries. "The humans, the people who fathered Bluetooth, they have an interesting phrase: eyes are the windows to the soul." She slides her blade back in the dark sheath knotted to her belt and plucks the empty, foul smelling mug from the recesses it fled to, smashing it down on the abused counter with enough force to turn the remainder of his digestive system to lead, but not enough to break the hardy material of both counter and mug. "If you had a soul," Lihnd says clearly, the corners of her mouth pulling up in sadistic amusement, "I'd say it works just fine. Here," she pulls a few shell blue coins from a slit in her overcoat, dropping them before Taggert like poisoned manna, "get yourself drunk." She snaps on her heel, moving in defined motions to leave, and she hesitates, turning to face him as he mindlessly scoops the coins to himself, a particularly ugly look destroying her pretty features.  
  
She says softly, "Shove that up your ass and die." And then she leaves, forcing her lithe body through the crush of burly, drunken creatures, faceless, nameless, homeless, and, behind her, Taggert pushes the scraggly pile of coins forward, asking the service drone for a new mug of thick alcohol.  
  
-  
  
Stepping into her Spartan, cooled apartment is akin to taking that first step out through the circle of grass, bare feet sinking into the dark snow, a shift in atmosphere from the warm vitality preserved in a semicircle about the dome house by the grace of the Eternal Queen Riana, to the breathtaking, humid cold of a true Galidor winter, and Lihnd inhales, overcome by the beauty of a precious memory she yearns to replace with a new one, a new memory of snow the shade of ebony diamonds. For now, though, she closes her eyes, fingering the pebbles of the door pad, pressing a button and standing still as the hydraulic door hisses and clicks across the empty space, locking automatically.  
  
She was a child by the standards of Galidor's slow-aging people, young and just beginning to experiment with the few glinch powers she was developing, and the appearance of a rare snowfall, the first she had ever seen. The desire to feel it, taste it, cup it in her hands, filled her heart and she fidgeted all through the simple breakfast her mother prepared, shoving a crumbling roll into her mouth and forcing it down her throat as it coated her tongue with a pasty layer of wettened, dry bread. She managed to choke it down as she tumbled out the door, her blue nightgown fluttering around chubby, pale legs as she skipped across the grass, her unique sense of smell picking up the clear, fresh scent of water, but her sharp eyes could not find the source of the crystalline liquid; the sleek lakes and waterfalls of the east are a distance away. Staring at the darkened snow, she snagged her upper lip in her teeth and chewed, anxiously, once, then leapt as ferociously as she dared, planting her knees and hands firmly when she landed. A gasp tore from her lops, a quiet plea at the coldness seeping like river water through the cerulean fabric of her nightgown, and she felt that lovely chill drift up, enveloping her in the silence of winter, the rush as her senses, heightened by the glimmer of inherent power in her blood, before she closed her fingers, lifting a handful of the slippery cold and fitting it into her mouth, an epiphany combusting in her mind: the snow was water! She decided there, kneeling in the snow with one hand a brilliant red and her cheeks slick from inexplicable tears, that she loved winter.  
  
Lihnd exhales, reluctantly opening her eyes to see the clean order of her small, narrow apartment, momentarily foreign to her senses as she emerges from the euphoric moment she first became aware of the sheer vastness of everything, the breathless feeling of becoming a hunter in those delicate seconds. Casting her gaze gliding over the turquoise furniture, scant as it is, she groans at the sight of the thin disk hovering an inch or two over the single bed occupying one side of her room, indicating that someone has deigned it dutiful to contact her personal line. She grumbles a few choice expletives and strides across the room, her steps predatory as she strips her belt off and shrugs away her overcoat, tossing the offending articles onto a small sofa. Wearing naught but a loose white undershirt tucked studiously beneath the tidy hem of her dark pants, she snatches the flat disk from its floating station and thumbs it once, releasing it. Simultaneous with her freeing the message disk, an admittedly fuzzy hologram explodes from it, stretching and morphing to blanket her wall with a poor quality visual, gritty and spotted with occasional glitches of furry darkness.  
  
"--ell won't this thing work?" Allegra's voice echoes from the disk's small confines, tinny and warped by a low transmission. Judging by the haggard, insolent expression on the darker-skinned woman's face, Lihnd is willing to bet she didn't call for love advices and she winces briefly, cutting her mind off before it can slip down the treacherous slop of a good-natured joke about old friendships. "Oh, thank God, finally…Lihnd, if for whatever reason you get this message," she squint at the image of Allegra and is mildly startled to see her hair is longer, her eyes perhaps a bit sadder; hold is this, Lihnd almost demands of the hologram, catching herself, "then I am really screwed." Lihnd grins proudly at the crude term. Allegra sighs, a sound muted and filtered into a noise close to a tuneless hum, rising and falling meaninglessly, and rubs at the base of her skull, a nervous habit she has never explained to anyone other than the Three: Jens, Euripides, and Nepol. "I've attached some files of importance, the usual stuff about Nicholas' strategies and movements, who all of Galidor descent has disappeared of late, lists of allies: his and ours, et cetera, don't worry, the info is a lot more recent than this message." Allegra grants her an orchestrated, encouraging smile, the one she used years before to tell Nick that even though she thought he was a complete and total idiot, she'd go along with whatever he had planned, God protect them all. "I've deleted all other copies of the files; even if it is old stuff to us, he doesn't know we have it. You should be able to download the attached files to your comp.  
  
"If you get this, odds are I am, to be cliché, beyond all hope. Oh, and, by the way, remember to feed my pet for me, would you?"  
  
And with that, the holograms flickers, overrun with cancerous spots as if struck with leprosy, and the disk falls to the bed's giving softness.  
  
"Shit," Lihnd spits out as she snatches up the disk a second time, scrambling to her feet and running slipshod to a small, chipped cubbyhole hidden by a pile of clothes carefully arranged there, digging into it and pulling out her comp as well as a flat cylinder with a pad of silver buttons, standard Kuin ciphers blazed onto them. She shoves the disk into the reception port of her comp and begins booting the device, tapping the complex pattern into the cylinder that will get her a link with Jens, and she pauses a minute to gather herself into a manageable presence, which promptly turns to ashes as she struggles to slap something together piecemeal in her head. Cutting off the link-up temporarily, she repeats her curse, a great deal more vehemently before, slamming the comp down in her lap as she roars, soundlessly, for it to hurry up.  
  
"Shit!"  
  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
listen, do you hear  
- - - - - - - - - - - - -  
  
  
"I've got the sniffles," the woman in the crimson room moans piteously, her voice both sad and angry as she pinches her nose and shuffles, like a despondent cat, her feet through the thick, shaggy carpeting stained a shade further maroon than the rest of her appointed quarters. Her free hands reaches behind her head, slender fingers gingerly probing the puckered ridge of skin hidden by the curling mist of her thick black hair, nursing a wash of lonesome self-pity and feeling she is more child than adult. The rain outside streams through the air like wet silver, throwing itself suicidally against the crystal glass of the vast, multi-paned window lining the outer side of her room, thickly bordered by folded, leaden oceans of crushed garnet velvet she moved aside earlier, to see the molten storm looming up, peculiarly out of place in the acrid dryness of Kek's sweltering air. Standing at the wavering helm of the sky, watching the snarling wind lick up thousands of orange tentacles of sand, whirling and smashing into oblivion through the furious gale and the horrible, saddened rain, Allegra runs her hands along her arms, feeling tiny bumps where the flesh rises in response to the cool touch. She steadfastly ignores the stick liquid trickling ever-so-slowly down her cheeks, and when she does acknowledge the existence of it and, a little more reluctantly, its origins, she tells herself sternly, silently, It is a perfectly normal reaction to frequent and erratic bursts of adrenaline, brought on by stress, frustration, and weather that is often associated with bouts of depression. Seasonal anxiety, an overt sense of loss, subconscious response to some regressed, or suppressed, fear.  
  
"'Night of the Living Dead,'" she mutters and snickers in spite of herself, suddenly awash by the mortifying memory of a pair of eight-year olds peeking through the staircase at her home at a Halloween party, bound and determined to figure out how, without any of the adults downstairs noticing them, one could be dead yet living. The recollection of Nick-who-was-not-Nicholas, his boundlessly empowered imagination pushing him full bore into the throes of hysteria as zombies rose from their weighty tombs and scaring her to tears, as her parents and his grandfather pounded up the stairs to hug and kiss and scold the terror away, is threaded with an old annoyance at the nightmares the experience had brought, unwelcome, to her that night. Right, she whispers in her head, crossing her wrists over her cheeks and touching a continuing, pillowing dampness, I'm crying because seventeen years ago, my best friend and I saw a B-rate horror film during a sleepover. "Stupid," she scowls, arching her hands back to her arms and rubbing the insides of her wrists against the thighs of her shadow colored slacks, grimacing at the layer of dirt stuck to the thin cloth.   
  
An air of resignation sidles onto her shoulders and utters a low, disgruntled sound at the mild grime hooked on her palms, wrinkling her nose and trudging across the plush depths of the floor, her booted feet lost in its short, woven forest, gravitating towards the door that opens in a light bubble of compressed air when the heel of her hand finds the quiet blue button alongside it. Stepping into the fractionally cooler hallway outside of her chambers, she crosses her arms over her shirt, tucking her hands under her arms, pinned to her sides, and grants the staircase to her left a disparaging glare filled with every drop of exhausted malice she can muster, and she stamps her foot on the ground as thoughtfully as she can, mentally exacting a tiny map that is composed of little more than the small staircase and the landing adjoined to it, her room, and the smaller rooms connected to one another, with her bedchamber as the central hub. The bathroom in particular is of interest to her in the form of basic cleanliness, but she foregoes those pleasantries for the more important matter of knowledge, to take this opportunity to learn things she might find use for when Lihnd, being the crass individual she is, takes it to mind to rally up the Three and sabotage Nicholas, one wolf attacking another for control of a single beta female, and Allegra sets her fact sternly in a habitual expression of perfectly contained exasperation, hoping the other woman has not yet viewed the aged recording she made years ago, following the horrifying ordeal of the Larjonian rebellion, the massacre caused by her insistence in the Larjonian people rising up against the complicated monarchy of the Outer Dimension. A choking wave of unprecedented guilt unbalances her and she curls her fingers into claws, tightening over the softness of her rib cage, and she breathes in a shaky manner.  
  
'Allegra,' she imagines Lihnd saying, that flashing scowl on her face showing twin rows of imperceptibly sharp teeth, 'you are being stupid again. Now shut up and get in the spaceship before I have to beat Nepol into dragging you in.'  
  
She laughs at herself, at the fitting words she has on past occasions heard in one form or another, and she pushes the guilt away, but still logs into memory the idea to free, at least, the Larjonian imprisoned somewhere below, hidden and locked away in the catacombs of Kek's cavernous tunnels and dungeons, a web of natural underground labyrinths paved and walled by some ancient ruler in the centuries before the first monarch of Galidor appeared. "That would be around, what, the French Revolution?" she remarks dryly as she walks down the short landing to the plain, nondescript door at its end. Either it's another door into my bathroom, she thinks, which means the designer's a pervert, or--  
  
Allegra taps the release button and the door slides out of the way, and she is standing on the verge of death, staring a colossal distance down from the peak of one of the dead prison's towers, and her fingers splay frantically, curling over the metal frame humming with pulsating energy. Her breathing is frozen, air caught sharply in her throat as if her lungs are filled with tar, as if a knife has been thrust into her fragile chest cavity, and she remembers being held, helpless, over a bottomless, snarling abyss, jutting crags surrounded by screeching bat creatures, knowing she will be killed, fearing when she is not. The fear is still there; it clogs her throat and stares down at the blood red dirt so far below her eyesight fails, reeling and turning her stomach.  
  
Stumbling back, she slams her hand over the release button and leans against the door when it is shut, her limbs quivering as she inhales deeply, sucking air into her lung, breathing, breathing, trying to forget the fear.  
  
  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
I thought I heard a promise  
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   
  
  
  
|Author's Notes: I have a great deal to say for this chapter, the first thing being that I'm hoping someone will find the irony in this whole situation. Not only have I posted this more or less a month later than I had planned it, but instead of it being an entirely 'past' chapter…it's an entirely 'present' chapter. I'd still like to write a 'past' chapter, but I think it'll be a while later, considering I still have a major original character to introduce, as well as the Three's first 'present' appearance in this fic, and a minor original character. Next chapter should actually handle all of their introductions.  
  
A huge amount of the stuff to be said is set in the first half of this chapter (half being a relative term). A somewhat small one would be my spelling of everyone's favorite slightly antisocial Galidorean refugee's name. I've chosen to spell it as 'Lihnd' for a variety of reasons, the foremost being the pronunciation of it. I originally thought it to be Lin, but if one pays close enough attention, there is a 'd' sound at the end of it, but a very muted one. Spelling her name as 'Lind' stuck me as awkward (I thought it looked too much like it would rhyme with 'rind' and 'mind,' instead of the obviously softer sound to it), and I like using 'h' in the middle of foreign names. Thusly, Lihnd. Bug me about official spellings later. ;]   
  
I've chosen to throw in references to Earth cultures because, for one, the Stranger had to have been in the Outer Dimension for quite a while (this is related to a spiel I'll write some other time about aging in O.D. and Galidor), as Earth slang pops up every once in a while in Nepol's terminology, and there is always an undertone of familiarity with human matters (considering Samuel was also in the position of, for whatever period of time, being the husband of a queen, this could also have had results). Two obvious references are the frequent comparisons of Lihnd with a wolf and the card allegory. I used a Joker, an ace, and a deux-of-diamonds as allegories for deception and power: contrary to popular belief, the two Joker cards are the most powerful cards in a deck, hence why they are rarely allowed in games. The Joker represents the absolution of chance or fate, a darkly humorous reminder to expect the unexpected and keep in mind that the greatest fool can be the greatest foe. (I'd love to write an essay drawing inferences from the Joker cards' in the shaping of the character of Xellos Metallium, the Trickster Priest, from the multitude of Slayers anime, manga, and novels.) The ace, however, is both the second greatest card (often considered the greatest, as the Joker is frequently discarded at the opening of a game) and the weakest; ever play Solitaire? Then you know. It is capable to beat anything other than a Joker…and another card that I'll discuss. Aces symbolize the simplicity of power as well as the weakness of it, used to hide other cards or be hidden by them, and, overall, it's always felt like it could be described as 'innocent,' in a way. The other card capable of destroying an ace, the third I mentioned in the aforementioned passage, is simply a two: an ace is higher than a king, but it's also a one. Deux is French for 'two' and I coupled it with diamonds for yet another horrifically long-winded hidden meaning. The diamonds sect in a traditional card deck are symbolic of greed and jealousy, the lust for money, power, and other vices. No offense to French people, of course, but 'deux' is far fancier than 'two,' and diamonds are associated with elegance, grace, and fancy stuff. (*sweatdrops*) So…Taggert was bluffing that he had a Joker (absolute power) by hiding it with an ace (innocent power) that people would accept the ace alone as a truth, but Lihnd saw through the deception and figured the Joker was only a deux-of-diamonds (his own greed personified), which would only serve to defeat him. Basically, it was a horrifically symbolic way of saying Lihnd held all the cards in that meeting. I could have save a lot of time and a lot of grief if I'd just said that, wouldn't I? *ducks various flying objects*  
  
Last thing for Lihnd: I labeled her Hunter. This is a tribute of sorts to tradition the Outer Dimension seems to have with adding '-er' to things. Samuel's title was 'Stranger,' Koulash's was 'Opener,' etc. It seemed to fit, as wolves are hunter and Lihnd is most assuredly a hunter. Her epiphany is also a tribute, but one to anyone who has ever seen something wonderful in nature and realized, straight to their core, the vastness of life.   
  
Two personal jokes in Allegra's bit of this chapter, vague ones. 'The Night of the Living Dead' memory is a call-back to when I was five and sneaked a viewing of Bela Lugosi's version of 'Dracula,' the black-and-white one. Vampires still scare the heck out of me (unless it's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' where they tend to be more goofy than menacing and more tortured than torturous). Her off-hand pervert comment is a reference to the word I use most often in my art class, as I sit with four guys who are definitely perverted. Thank God they treat me like a baby sister. Well…except for one, but he's a buttmunch. . I doubt I'm marrying a guy from Mississippi.  
  
This chapter managed to earn the PG-13 rating, as Lihnd cursed four times (it's completely unrealistic to expect someone outside of a children's show to say something like 'golly gee whiz' in a stressful, aggressive situation like war) and it was suggested that Allegra cursed (hologram). Mild references to blood in the first paragraph. (I have some minor continuity errors to fix in chapter one…)  
  
Thank-yous to my two reviewers as well as the people who reviewed the prologue, and Mr. Matthew Ewald, who has been relatively understanding as a pen pal and has yet to kill me for my inability to punctually reply to e-mails. But I'm working on being better at responding faster! (Alas, if only AOL would stop being so rude to me…)  
  
I've been wanting very badly to write a side story focusing on Samuel and Riana…another fic, maybe?  
  
Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease.| 


End file.
